I went active with Scott Jurek on a clear, arctic morning aftermost month, an accessible four-mile bend in Central Park. He ran addition few afar with 50 or so adherent fans, again addition few by himself, for a absolute of about 15. Afterwards that he showered and came to my abode to baker cafeteria afore activity for a late-afternoon jog of addition 10 afar or so.
That’s an accessible day for Jurek, 36, an able ultramarathoner. But one ability say he has been in a slump: he has not won a above chase back the 2008 Spartathlon. On the added hand, he set a claimed almanac in acceptable there, it was his third afterwards achievement on the 153-mile advance amid Athens and Sparta, and he holds the fifth-, sixth- and eighth-fastest times in chase history.
If aftermost year was a wash, this year he is fit and psyched as he prepares to leave for Brive-la-Gaillarde, France, the armpit of the 2010 24-Hour Run apple championship on Thursday and Friday. It is a arduous chase to actuate how abounding afar runners can complete on a 1.4-kilometer alley bend (about nine-tenths of a mile) in a 24-hour period.
Jurek says he can breach the American record, 162 miles, captivated by Mark Godale. (The apple record, 178 miles, and aloof about every ultramarathoning almanac from 100 to 1,000 afar and from 24 hours to 10 canicule are, Jurek said, “unassailably” captivated by Yiannis Kouros of Greece, who no best competes.)
To win Brive, Jurek said, he must: “Get on it, crank about it, and get it done. It’s all in a day’s work.”
It’s a continued day, and one that raises a accurate aspect of Jurek’s training that makes him an abnormally absorbing athlete: he is a vegan, arresting no beastly products.
There are added able athletes who do not eat meat: Milwaukee Brewers aboriginal baseman Prince Fielder, a vegetarian, may be the best known, and Georges Laraque, who plays for the Montreal Canadiens in the N.H.L., is additionally a vegan. But it is difficult for some to appreciate how this affairs is accordant with training weeks of 140 afar and more, “easy” runs of 40 afar and breach training that includes acclivous three-mile repeats, all culminating in contest that are generally 100 afar or more, sometimes through chastening or arctic wastelands or up and bottomward mountains.
Jurek absolutely looks advantageous enough. He is tall, dwarfing best aggressive marathoners, not abuse thin, with a quick smile and abundant energy. A few hours afterwards our morning run, he showed up at my abode and began affairs things out of the refrigerator and abdomen with abandon: vegetables, greens, herbs, miso, tofu, olives, shallots, lemons, nut adulate and more.
He displayed knife abilities and acceptable comestible judgment, advancing a meal for me and his girlfriend, Jenny Uehisa, a artist for Patagonia (he is sponsored by Brooks Sports). We ate a lemony Greek bloom with cucumbers, tomatoes, endless of olives and seaweed; a stir-fry of vegetables with tofu and an absorbing miso and cashew sauce; and a bank of quinoa.
Where did he apprentice to baker this way? And added to the point, how does he survive? Afterwards all, I said to him, none of my active buddies, a accumulation of nonelite but defiantly committed marathoners who alternation in Central Park, advance as accurate a agenda as his, and abounding affirmation to accept agitation arresting abundant calories alike while actuality omnivorous.
“The accomplished issue,” he said, “is absolutely that: accepting abundant calories. The aboriginal affair to anguish about isn’t so abundant what you eat, but how abundant you eat. You accept to booty the time to sit at the table and accomplish abiding your calorie calculation is aerial enough. And back you’re a vegan, to access your calories as you access training you charge added food. This isn’t an abolishment diet but an admittance diet.”
Jurek grew up in Proctor, Minn., bistro cookie dough, canned vegetables and his allotment of fast food. Back his mother, Lynn, developed assorted sclerosis (she died this spring), he and his ancestors began cooking, but the aliment was, he said, “very Midwest — meat and potatoes.” In college, his diet began to improve, and as he “saw how abundant ache is affairs related,” he began bistro “real food, bistro the way bodies accept been bistro for bags of years.”
He fabricated the alteration to beneath meat and added fish, again eventually agape out dairy and added beastly articles entirely.
“It’s absolutely a brainy barrier,” he said, and he acutely has acquaintance advantageous those. “I charge bristles to eight thousand calories a day, and I get that all from bulb sources. It’s not hard, either. I like to eat, and I don’t accept to anguish about weight management. All I charge is a high-carbohydrate diet with abundant protein and fat.”
He said he spent a abundant accord of time shopping, advancing and affable aliment — and chewing. He is amid the slowest and best advised eaters I know, and there is article about his assurance at the table that is evocative of his assurance on the road: he aloof doesn’t stop.
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